Yemen's hunt for master bomber Ibrahim al-Asiri

In a land where allegiances are easily bought and sold, the price put by the
Yemeni government on the head of Ibrahim al-Asiri last week tells its own
story.

Asiri has achieved a terrorist breakthrough designing bombs that can pass undetected through airport securityPhoto: Reuters

By Michael Andrews in Sana'a and Colin Freeman

4:53PM BST 10 Aug 2013

Under pressure to thwart what the West feared would be a major al-Qaeda terror attack, the country’s security forces offered to pay five million riyals to anyone who could help find the terror group’s master bomber.

However, the reward, issued for Asiri and 24 other leading members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), is not as impressive as the figures sound. The equivalent in US dollars is just £15,000 — far less than the £103,000 that AQAP itself offered last December for anyone who killed Gerald Feierstein, the US ambassador to Yemen.

The competing bounties show how perilously level the playing field in the war on terror has become in Yemen, where a weak, corrupt and cash-starved central government is pitted against one of the most sophisticated and well-resourced al-Qaeda franchises on the planet.

America only yesterday called off an unprecedented terrorism alert triggered by an intercepted conversation between Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda, and Nasser al-Wuhaysi, the commander of the terrorist movement’s Yemen affiliate. All but one of the 19 diplomatic missions closed as a result of the alarm will officially reopen today, the exception being the US embassy in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, which will remain shut until further notice. A decision to close the consulate in the Pakistani city of Lahore because of a separate threat will stay in force.

Yemeni soldiers at a checkpoint on a street leading to the US and British embassies in Sana'a (AP)

Whether the attack was to target the embassies themselves or, as some reports claimed, against a set of Yemeni oil refineries, remained unclear this weekend.

What really worries Western security officials is the chilling threat posed by the expertise of the Saudi-born Asiri to deliver destruction for the al-Qaeda leadership virtually anywhere on the planet.

For the 31-year-old former chemistry student has achieved a terrorist breakthrough, equivalent to cracking the Enigma code — designing bombs that can pass undetected through airport security, defying the sophisticated additional checks put in place since September 11.

His technical wizardry has been responsible for the two most serious terror alerts in recent years. The first was in 2009, when the so-called “underpants bomber”, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallib, a London-educated Nigerian student, attempted to detonate an Asiri-made bomb on a flight over Detroit.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallib attempted to detonate an Asiri-made bomb on a flight over Detroit (ABC/EPA)

Then, in the “parcel bomb” plot of 2010, two Asiri devices were hidden in cartridges of computer printer ink on planes bound from Yemen to the United States, primed to detonate in mid-air.

On both occasions disaster was avoided largely by luck. The “underpants bomb” failed to detonate properly, while the parcel bomb plane was diverted to East Midlands airport in Leicestershire after a Saudi intelligence tip-off. Even then, though, the devices’ design was so sophisticated that Scotland Yard experts dismantled it without realising it was a live bomb.

Asiri’s genius has been to perfect the use of an odourless plastic explosive called pentaerythritol tetranitrate, or PETN, which is also used to detonate atom bombs. Not only does it foil sniffer dogs, it shows no particular profile on X-ray machines. Yet just a few ounces can demolish a house.

“Asiri is a master of his craft, and the single most serious terrorism threat to Britain and the West,” said one British security source. “He may be hiding in the mountains in Yemen, but his skills can potentially reach us over here. It is one reason why AQAP gives the security world sleepless nights.”

Asiri’s latest ruse could take bombing to a new level of concealment altogether. Last year, it was revealed he was attempting to design devices to be surgically implanted inside a bomber’s body.

A detailed document discovered by US intelligence suggested he had commissioned doctors to examine surgical processes for inserting the bombs and, after experimenting on dogs and other animals, had worked out that an overweight bomber would best suit his purpose. “The idea was to insert the device in the terrorist’s 'love handle’,” one US official told Newsweek.

Abdullah al-Asiri (Reuters)

Already, Asiri has used a human guinea pig for his research — none other than his 23-year-old brother, Abdullah, whom he equipped with a “suppository bomb”.

Abdullah, who is said to have been brainwashed into jihadism by his older sibling, then attempted to kill Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, a senior Saudi interior minister who has led a programme in the kingdom to encourage terrorists to reform.

Posing as a jihadist keen to repent, Abdullah gained a private audience with Prince Muhammad, detonating the device when he entered his office. It killed Abdullah but missed the prince, who escaped only with an injured hand and a gory mess over his office ceiling. Security sources later said Abdullah’s own body mass had deflected the charge upwards rather than outwards. But they believe it is only a matter of time before Asiri overcomes that particular glitch.

It is this fiendish expertise — and the likelihood that he is passing his knowledge on to other AQAP cohorts — that explains why the recent terror alert prompted the closure not just of Western embassies in Yemen but right around the Islamic world.

Some have accused the West of over-exaggerating the threat, pointing out that AQAP’s leadership has been badly hit by drone strikes in the past two years. Compared to its sister organisations in Iraq and Syria, where the latter is now leading the rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad, it also remains a small and remote organisation, with little of the diaspora connections to Britain that make the Pakistani, Somali and Iraqi franchises of al-Qaeda so dangerous.

“Al-Qaeda has suffered losses and it is trying to make an impression,” said Ali al-Sarari, a political analyst who is close to the Yemeni government. “The mere talk about an upcoming attack gives the group a chance to restore its shattered image as a group capable of exporting terrorism.”

Nonetheless, AQAP is the only foreign al-Qaeda franchise to have mounted any potentially serious terror attacks on Western airlines in recent years. And the fact that Britain chose to evacuate its heavily fortified embassy in Sanaa entirely, rather than simply reducing to a few key staff, suggests an unusual level of alarm.

So who exactly is the slightly built Asiri and how did he rise to become such a threat? Born the son of a retired soldier in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, he was raised in a pious, middle-class Muslim family. He studied chemistry at Riyadh’s King Saud University but dropped out after two years. In 2003 was arrested and jailed while trying to enter Iraq to fight the Americans.

Quite why he became radicalised is not clear, but his family say he underwent a personality change after the death of another brother in a car crash.

After serving nine months in jail, he fled to Yemen with Abdullah, where he now tops the country’s list of most-wanted terrorists. That list represents a hit parade of terrorism and is the product of the failure of local efforts to fight terrorism.

Today, AQAP is best known for their so-called YouTube preacher, Anwar al-Awlaki, whose internet sermons have inspired numerous “lone wolf” jihadists in the West. He was killed in a drone strike.

Anwar al-Awlaki

AQAP’s core membership is made up of a group of 23 suspects who tunnelled out of a jail in Sanaa in 2006 — possibly with inside help — and who went on to regalvanise what had until then been a withering local jihadist scene.

Embarrassingly for Saudi Arabia, five of AQAP’s key members had also been on Prince Nayef’s reform programme, to which they had been transferred from Guantánamo Bay in exchange for reassurances that they would undergo religious “deprogramming”.

Asiri is now believed to be hiding with the rest of AQAP in Yemen’s lawless hinterlands, where powerful local clan chiefs can easily be bribed to protect them from the security forces.

Already, he is understood to have achieved what is arguably the ultimate accolade for any al-Qaeda terrorist — numerous US drone strikes aimed specifically at him, followed by at least one premature report of his death.

Last week saw a spike in drone activity, with at least 14 suspected AQAP militants dying in three separate strikes between Tuesday and Thursday. But while officials credit the strikes with making serious inroads into AQAP’s upper leadership, there are fears that they act as a recruiting sergeant for the very cause they are trying to eliminate. For when they miss their intended targets and kill civilians instead, AQAP members often arrive on the scene shortly afterwards, offering to pay for family funerals, providing cash compensation and encouraging angry relatives to join their ranks.

“The only outcome coming from this extensive use of drones is a less safe Yemen and a less safe America,” said Farea al-Muslimi, a Yemeni writer. “They serve as a stab in Yemen’s hopes of becoming a stable, democratic country.”

As things stand, though, such strikes are likely to continue — and if they hit Asiri before he perfects his “bodybomb”, the West may deem it a price worth paying.